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Monday, December 17, 2012

Massacre in Connecticut

Edit: If you are going to criticize anything I've said. I ask you to please read the whole post first.

Last night I was getting ready for the Niners game when there was a moment of silence for the massacre in Newtown. I took this as my cue to hit the restroom right before kickoff. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for moments of silence so this part isn't really my complaint.

Quick Digression: I hate during moments of silence when someone decides to cough about 5 seconds into it. I want yell at them, “what the hell is your problem, you couldn't not make any noise for 10 seconds?”, except I know people would then get pissed at me.

Obama tearing up after Friday's murders

But I digress back. What I really want to talk about is how I was pumped to watch the biggest game of year and after 3 minutes of football NBC cut away to the President’s Second speech. Not only did I miss a good 15 minutes of the game but I was forced to sit in a silent bar and listen to a socialist wax poetically about tragedy and the communal good. All I wanted to do was stand up and shout, “change it back to the freaking game”. Is that wrong?

Actually that was a trick question because if you answered “Yes”, you should lose your right to give opinions on matters that don’t directly affect you. You and the media have no right to choose which tragedies are worthy of mourning and reflection. Friday’s massacre in Newton was a horrible tragedy and judging from the 24 hour nonstop news coverage and Facebook feeds this event was poignant for many people.

Widely reported tragedies like this and the Batman shooting seem to upset people and cause them to reflect for a Brief period of time. I do not feel the same way. There is so much unnecessary death and bloodshed every day that it feels wrong to feel bad for some people, because it got news coverage, and not others. I can turn on the news any day of the week and see 45 dead in a country far away and feel the same way a lot of people felt Friday after the “horrible tragedy”. I can also decide not to pay attention to any of it and pretend like death, disease and famine do not exist. I’m not sure if that makes me overly sensitive or indifferent.

I have literally seen this picture displayed over 35 times

I don’t want to get into too many statistics about how many people unexpectedly die each year, month, and day. I won’t even get into the hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties of war every time one country decides to start attacking another over religion, oil, greed, power, or “self-defense”. But I do want to share
one pertinent statistic:

In 2010 according to the CDC an average of 287 people are shot each day and 86 of them killed. (this number takes into account self-inflicted gun wounds)

What does this mean? It means that there is “horrible tragedy”, from guns or anything else, every single day of our lives! So please, media and the rest of you, don’t tell me what days I should pray for those who have lost loved ones and when to reflect on my own life and how fortunate I am for not having to had endured such devastation. Let's be fair to all victims across our country and the world. Unless we're going to have serious discussions about violence and tragedy everyday, I don't need to hear about how survivors in rural white America are hero's and courageous.

I have one last question and I feel now would be a pertinent time to ask it. It is not intended to be a stance for or against more gun control.

“Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”

If that’s the case; Should people have guns?

Obviously this question is more for my readers on the Right.

I often wonder if the notoriety that the killer receives willcause more misguided people to partake in such horrific actions